All The Real Girls (2003) : HollywoodJesus.com : DVD Reviews, Previews and Spiritual Commentary

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All The Real Girls (2003)
Release Date:

MPAA Rating:
R

Rating Reason:
For language and some sexuality

Genre:
Drama, Romance

Starring:

Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Patricia Clarkson, Benjamin Mouton, Maurice Compte, Danny McBride, Shea Whigham, Bartow Church

Written By:
David Gordon Green

Director:
David Gordon Green

Official Site:
All The Real Girls (2003)

Synopsis:

Twenty-two-year-old Paul lives with his beloved mom and works as a grease monkey in a broken down North Carolina mill town. Charming, smart, unambitious, he has a devoted circle of rowdy friends and a reputation as a callous heartbreaker. When he meets his best friend's sister Noel, fresh from boarding school graduation, the two fall into a perfect, real, terrifying love. They share innermost secrets and inhabit a sweet, dreamy bubble of mutual admiration and understanding. But soon the perfection is too weighty, the bubble too delicate.

All The Real Girls (2003) | Review

I found myself being engulfed

Benn Becker

Lincoln, NE.

This is the second film from up and coming director/writer DAVID GORDON GREEN (the first being "George Washington"). Green's films have a feel I can only describe as REAL. His characters are ordinary people and the mood is light and hypnotic. I found myself being engulfed in ALL THE REAL GIRLS--losing myself in the film in a wonderful way. Green masterfully uses the whole package to tell his story--score, dialogue, cinematography, editing--to create a mesmerizing feel.

ALL THE REAL GIRLS deals mostly with a burgeoning young relationship set in a rural North Carolina mill town, however the side storylines also add to the feel of the film. I don't want to reveal too much of the film though. I just feel it's best if the viewer comes in without knowing a whole lot. Paul (PAUL SCHNEIDER; co-writer with Green) is the local who has made the rounds through the girls in the area . searching for meaning, direction, and purpose. Noel (ZOOEY DESCHANEL) is his best friend's sister who just returned from boarding school and she and Paul make a connection. He may see her as a chance for a fresh start in both life and romance; she may look at him the way one looks at a first love--with reverence, with idyllic hope. Paul is questioning the intelligence of his past choices and subconsciously has learned that sex often causes problems in relationships and demeans the emotion of love when there's no commitment. He wants to love and to be loved and loveable. Noel, coming from an all-girls school, hasn't had the chance to interact with the opposite sex on an intimate level. They may be heading in different directions when it comes to relationships. He is wanting stability and she is just starting to date. She has been warned about Paul's past, but sees him for how he treats her and how he makes her feel.

Roger Ebert's review extremely well done and he comments that the film "is too subtle and perceptive, and knows too much about human nature, to treat their lack of sexual synchronicity as if it supplies a plot. Another kind of movie would be entirely about whether they have sex. But Green, who feels tenderly for his vulnerable characters, cares less about sex than about feelings and wild youthful idealism. . Most movies about young love trivialize and cheapen it. Their cynical makers have not felt true love in many years and mock it, perhaps out of jealousy. They find something funny in a 20-year-old who still doesn't realize he is doomed to grow up to be as jaded as they are. Green is 27, old enough to be jaded, but he has the soul of a romantic poet."

The dialogue in the film is personal and emotive in a simple, yet meaningful way. Ebert again: "Green's dialogue has a kind of unaffected, flat naturalism. That doesn't mean their speech is not poetic. His characters don't use big words, but they express big ideas. Their words show a familiarity with hard times, disappointment, wistfulness." While watching a film you can often sense the screenwriter typing out the lines in all their perfection . that's not apparent here and it is refreshing! There are moments between Noel and Paul that especially struck me as true--at least from my limited, male viewpoint.

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